


The Woman in the Beige Trenchcoat

by psychosomatic86



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Brainwashing, Drugs, Man in the Tan Jacket Origin Story, Memory Loss, POV Multiple, Repressed Memories, Strexcorp, The Smiling God - Freeform, Time is Weird, memory manipulation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-05 08:57:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3113846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychosomatic86/pseuds/psychosomatic86
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The second realization terrifies her, makes her fear of the room seem like a childish phobia in comparison, but she knows that she must adhere to it. It is more important than anything she knows, more important than her, than her company, even her God, and it is the knowledge that she must never give her superiors even the slightest inclination that she has seen this room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Woman

**Author's Note:**

> Story time my lovelies:  
> So a few nights ago, I jolted awake and all that I could think of was "The Woman in the Pink Trenchcoat". I lied awake for some time, working it out in my head. Do I make her a fem version of The Man in the Tan Jacket? Is she related to him somehow? What do I do with this idea that will not leave me alone? Long story short, and many hours of jumbled thoughts later, I have developed a raging headcanon about The Man in the Tan Jacket and it Will. Not. Leave me. Alone.
> 
> Hopefully you find it as intriguing as I do because I am unhealthily excited about this. I want this to be one of my best fics. I want to make this dozens of chapters long. I'm making a deal with myself that this has to end up over 100,000 words because 1). It's an idea that totally can supersede that amount and 2). I feel that I'm not a real fanfic writer unless I write a really long piece.
> 
> I am determined to stick with this one, though updates may be sporadic as school is still a thing. But I have to keep this going, I am determined not to abandon this one.

Her heels click on the cold cement and the sound echoes around her, slicing through the tombstone air and ricocheting from the enclosing walls and dying light fixtures. Some of it becomes stuck in the fissures and cracks that vein the crumbling masonry. Most does not and reverberates back into her ears as a harsh clarity, keeping her alert and aware of her ensuing task.

The handsome, elk leather briefcase in her hand buzzes and vibrates and she gives it a gentle yet stern shake to remind them to stay quiet. They know as well as she does what the next few hours promise, but their programming is finicky and, unlike her, they are unable to keep themselves as easily contained.

The hallway she traverses shows no sign of ending but that was expected. The coded directions in her hand tell her it goes on for quite some time, proceeded by a lengthy stairwell, another stretch of grey corridor, and finally a maze of doors, some of which she must open, most of which she must not. Her feet should ache from the mere thought of the ground she has yet to cover, but she has spelunked enough of these abandoned offices to have become immune to their inane and seemingly impossible layouts.

And so she continues deeper and deeper into the concrete bowels of the building, further than any other employee would be willing to go. There is no sun here, no warmth, it is not just devoid of human influences, but the Smiling God’s, as well. Only a select few can survive under such conditions, and this is why she is perfect for the task, because although she worships the Smiling God with every atom of her being, she does not need Them to live.

She gloats silently to herself but her hand still goes instinctively to her throat, tracing fingers along the golden choker latched around her neck to help remind her that she is not completely above the Smiling God. They still provide her with the means to be seen, without Their assistance, she would be nothing more than a forgotten apparition and she must remain grateful for this.

“Don’t be selfish.” She scolds herself, her voice cutting weakly through the air only to land dead a few feet away. Even the words of the truest disciples struggle here.

“Be thankful, be humble, be productive.” She repeats this mantra in venerable whispers until her pride is stripped away, leaving her bare and exposed: a beating heart, breathing lungs, cognitive functions that are made to do only what they are supposed to. She is not her own person, she is a weapon, an asset to StrexCorp. To think anything else would be heresy, blasphemy, a knife in the back of her beloved God.

These thoughts comfort her and the spell of abominable pride dissipates. Relief floods through her just as the Smiling God floods her veins, and she gives a quick blessing in Their name before continuing her mission.

Up ahead, in the dusted light of the struggling fluorescents, she can just make out a break in the hallway, and it isn’t long before she is faced with the decision between five equally dark paths. One leads to the stairwell, the others go only deeper into the insanity of the building. Most old Strex offices were designed this way to confuse infiltrators and lead them to their demise, but the layout was abandoned when advancing technologies made it child’s play to detect and destroy any and all threatening interferences.

She sets her briefcase down and pulls out the cypher for the directions. She allows a bit of arrogance to bloom at the remembrance of her executive’s confused expressions when she had shown them the jumble of letters and numbers, some of which were not even in the same language, and how they had tried to remain stoically unimpressed when she had decoded the first line in under two minutes. The understanding comes just as easily now and she knows which passage to take in a matter of minutes. She picks up her briefcase and bows her head slightly as she enters the darkest of the five hallways. The few lights above sputter and crackle and some hiss out completely. But it’s not as if they were adding any comfort to the stark environment and she cinches her beige trenchcoat a bit tighter to ward off the sunless despair that attempts to seep into her very soul. Her only comfort is her gold choker, reminding her with every heartbeat that the Smiling God is still with her, that with every pulse of blood, more of Them is carried through her body, making her whole, making her worthy, and she must not disappoint Them.

On and on she continues, reaching the stairs and descending swiftly, hardly phased when she comes to entire flights that are cast in pitch black. Her necklace, imbued with the blood of her God, emits a honeyed glow in the darkness, and her pace slows only to ensure that her heels don’t catch on the crumbling steps she cannot quite see.

It is nearly fifteen minutes later that she finally reaches the bottom of the stairwell and she shoves a rusted door, proclaiming in aged lettering “ ** _Sub Level 8, Division of Human Technology and Corrections_** ”, open and is met by another endless hallway. Unlike the previous one, there are dozens of doors on each side of her but she pays them no mind. These are not the ones she needs.

She checks the instructions and they tell her to find the fourth to last corridor that branches from the main hall. Further decoding reveals that the corridor runs parallel to a room **_213-B_** and when she comes to this door, she cannot help but look inside. Her curiosity proves stronger than she would have expected, given the many times she has explored these abandoned buildings, and she somehow finds herself breaking the security pad in one, swift motion and kicking the door in.

The crash of the decaying metal bellows into the empty hall and continues on for a few seconds as she steps into the decrepit room. The weak light from the hall filters in and casts her shadow long and malevolent onto the floor and her heels are muted by the inch of dust covering the floor.

There is nothing special about the room at all, but she feels compelled to observe it nonetheless. There is a table with sinister but rusted tools sitting beside a bed with titanium restraints, gleaming silver and cold as if they had just been polished. She finds this amusing as Strex had abandoned such archaic means of control decades ago, and yet an overwhelming urge to examine them overtakes her.

She sets her briefcase gently onto the bed, and it hums with anticipation.

“No,” she tells them, “not yet.”

Her attention shifts back to the shining metal clasps and she reaches a tentative hand forward. Her fingernails trace along the curve before she makes actual contact with the restraints.

The shock is immediate, electric, and blinding white and she yanks her hand back, shaking and blinking back tears.

_“What the hell!?”_ She curses, though it comes out as more of a whimper. Her entire arm feels like it’s on fire and something deep inside her head throbs and aches. She has experienced pain many times during her career, but nothing like this. It’s as if her mind is trying to split itself in half, tearing at itself, ripping her very memories into pieces and her wounded hand almost reaches up to assist.

_“N-no!”_ She protests, sinking to her knees. The dust puffs up around her before settling again, indifferently, and she rocks ever so slightly, praying with ever fiber of her being to the Smiling God for relief.

They answer, and through her blurry vision she can see a bright, gold halo around her and she realizes it’s her necklace. She unclenches her jaw and closes her eyes, lifting her head back to assist the flow of her God’s medicine into her aching brain.

Slowly but surely, her mind mends itself. The rent in her psyche is sewn back up and replaced by a dull but manageable throb. Her wounded arm quivers and pulses like a live wire, but she pays it no mind. Instead, she rises shakily to her feet and grabs her briefcase. A swarm of golden BioBees cloud thickly in front of her when she opens it and she sets the case back onto the bed.

_“Nnn..”_ She winces, rubbing the swelling skin of her forearm, her head bowed and pulsing. “Scan.” She finally manages before going back to nursing her wounds.

Out of her periphery, she can see a warm glow as the bees hover above each of the restraints. Seconds later, they are crowding back in front of her, relaying their data.

“Ow!” She flinches as their findings flood her sore brain and she tells them to stop and rubs her temples.

They hum patiently as they wait and repeat the data in a slower fashion when she tells them to.

“That’s… _impossible_.” She growls when they finish. “How can you tell me it’s _nothing_!? Does _this_ look like nothing to you?” She yanks up the sleeve of her trenchcoat to reveal swollen, red skin, crossed with what appear to be raised, white scars.

The bees are not programmed for argumentative conversation and so begin to relay the information again, confused that she didn’t understand them, but she waves them off.

“Forget it.” She huffs angrily and they swarm back into the briefcase. She shuts it and picks it up, throwing a seething glare at the restraints before hurrying from the room. Whatever current was running through them or topical nerve agent they were coated in is undetectable to even Strex’s most advanced drones and she does not want to be anywhere near something that dangerous. They are far more sinister than anything she has ever encountered and they bring about an emotion she never thought possible, something she has never felt because she finds it useless and, ultimately, a waste of her time and Strex’s. It is the feeling of pure, genuine terror and it completely unhinges her. Even the room itself scares her, and she is not supposed to be scared, not with her God in her veins and her company in her mind. She must remain focused on her task if she wants to do both of Them proud. She must remain productive, she must, and she tells herself this to the beat of the blood pulsing deep within her injured brain. She tells herself this as she hurries down the corridor running next to the room. And as her company’s motto soothes her, returning her to a state of calm and collected bloodlust, something buried deep inside her, something locked in the part of her mind that had just tried to resurface, some forgotten aspect of her forces her head sideways so that she sees the hideous glint of the titanium through an unreasonably transparent observing window and two things are made as disturbingly clear to her as the glass of the window.

The first is that something happened in that room that she must find out at any and all costs. The second realization terrifies her beyond anything, makes her fear of the room seem like a childish phobia in comparison, but she knows that she must adhere to it. It is more important than anything she knows, more important than her, than her company, even her God, and it is the knowledge that she must never give her superiors even the slightest inclination that she has seen this room.


	2. The Secret Operative

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The man in this chapter is and is not exactly who you think he is.

**30 Years Earlier**

A man sits behind a cluttered desk, there are papers strewn across it and he chews a cigarette while smoke clouds his face. It is too hot in his office and sweat beads on his forehead as aching eyes stare absently at the reports in his hand.

He stands, stretches, and turns to the large map on the wall behind him. He looks at the papers again and moves a specifically colored thumbtack to a new location. His expression does not reveal if this is good or bad, he has been trained to never reveal anything, lives depend on it.

He sits again, running thin fingers through salt and pepper hair that should not be salt and pepper. He is only thirty five and his hair should be jet black, but it is a minor sacrifice to make. After all, others have given up so much more.

He goes back to his papers, switching between jotting notes in a private journal and clacking away on a typewriter. His secretary brings him weak coffee and he mumbles a thank you. She asks if he’s alright but doesn’t wait for a reply. She already knows the answer.

As the hours pass, he finds himself distracted by how quiet it is. The phone on his desk has not rung in a disconcertingly long time, but he tells himself everything is fine. He knew contact would be extremely difficult to maintain, and he cannot immediately assume something is wrong. Still, he finds himself glancing back at the phone every few minutes, praying for it to ring, to beep, to do anything but sit there.

He sighs and rubs the heels of his hands into bloodshot eyes. He needs sleep, he knows he does, and yet he cannot. There is too much to do. Too many reports to read and make sense of, too many plans to look over, too many goddamn things that need to be done, and there is so little time.

_“You wouldn’t believe how productive they are.”_

The words from their last conversation ring in his head and his eyes snap open.

_“Productive.”_ He says aloud, and the word tastes like acid in his mouth.

He remembers how they had said it the same way, though it sounded sweeter in their voices, like they enjoyed the feel of it rolling off their tongues. It had unnerved him, but they were always so immersed in work that even he was fooled at times.

_Well,_ he thinks, _if they are so damn productive, then I can be, too._

And so, ignoring the phone that is still quiet, he returns to his work.

*

It is almost two in the morning when he finally removes the last sheet from the typewriter. He signs his name and lays it in the tray at the corner of his desk for his secretary to deliver to his supervisors tomorrow. _Or today, since it’s already past midnight,_ he speculates. He then wonders if he should try to make it back to his apartment to get some rest, but he finds that he is wired beyond sleep. Instead, he lights his last cigarette and leans back in his chair, propping his feet next to the finished DOD reports and sighs smoke into the air. With his free hand, he rubs the bridge of his nose and works his fingers out to his eyes. They burn when he closes them for too long so he doesn’t do that, and with eyes that cannot be closed, he leans his head back and stares at the ceiling, blowing rings of smoke and tapping ashes onto the floor. The ceiling fan that weakly buffets the stuffy air is a comforting sight and he watches it go round and round and round and round…

*

He hears it in his dream before he does in real life because he experiences the phenomenon where what happens in the external world occurs in dreams before it does outside the realm of mental falsities. But this isn’t a falsity and he jolts awake, first in his dream and then out of it at the sound of the ringing. He knows even before he picks up that something is terribly wrong, and the shaking, terrified voice on the other end confirms this.

_“H-help!”_

It is the only word he hears before wild footsteps followed by a sickening crunch cut the voice off. The line is still live and the man holds back his urge to scream at the assailant as he listens for any information. But they are quick and find the device within seconds. His hand trembles as he holds the phone, and his other one clenches the edge of his desk, nails biting into the wood to stop himself from saying anything incriminating.

There is heavy breathing on the other end, but they will not speak either. This lasts for almost a full minute, the two of them breathing and waiting for the other to give in. Neither one does and the man is met with a humming dial tone as the other smashes the device.

He slams the phone into the cradle and curses with every profanity he knows, both english and not. He gets up from his desk and throws his chair across the room. It crashes uselessly against the wall but one of the legs cracks at an awkward angle. He stomps over, picks it up, and throws it again.

_“GODDAMMIT!!”_ He howls as the leg breaks completely, scattering splinters onto the carpet.

_“GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!”_

He careens his hands across his desk, scattering every piece of paper to the floor. He sees the typewriter out of the corner of his eye and throws that, too. It smashes with a satisfying crash, breaking into several pieces. This still does nothing to alleviate his anger and he continues ransacking his office, leaving nothing but the map on the wall and the framed photo of his wife untouched.

It is almost a half hour later that he can consider himself calmed, but his heart still pounds and his hands still clench. He places his fists on the bruised desk and leans on them, his bony shoulder blades hunching together. He thinks about what he must do.

Knowing StrexCorp, they are not just going to get rid of them. They are too skilled, they know too much, _they are_ _too damn useful to waste_. And if the company is as productive as he’s been told, there is no telling what they can accomplish with them in their clutches.

He thinks on this for a long time. Tries to find even the smallest loophole, but this is the tightest knot that has ever tied his hands. There is no other way out. If he wants even a prayer of saving them, of stopping Strex from using them, he will have to do it himself.

_“Oh dios…”_ he whispers, sinking to the floor.

He sits there for a while, back against the desk, head in his hands, weeping because he knows he will never return from this. It’s a one way mission, either he ignores it and watches the world burn at the hands of StrexCorp, or he sacrifices the rest of his life for the sake of reinstating his two best agents to finish the job once and for all. And in reality, there is no other option but the latter. He has to do this.

And then he thinks about his wife and his child. He thinks about how he will never see them again, how he will never grow old with the love of his life, how he will never see his child’s first smile, hold their hands when they take their first steps, take them to school on their first day, be there to protect them from harm. But if he doesn’t do this, there will be no world for his child to even have “firsts” in, there will be no world for the man to live happily with his family, there will be no world at all if he does not do this.

“Okay.” He says to himself. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

The words are empty and dead, and he is empty and dead. At that moment, the entirety of the world is empty and dead.

He stands on shaking legs and surveys the room. It is in complete disarray but he sees the phone cord peeking out from under a pile of splintered wood and shredded papers. He walks numbly over and sinks back down to his knees, tossing away the debris and pulling out the set. Its cord is stretched, as it is still miraculously plugged in, and he hopes with all that he is worth that it isn’t broken.

He falls clumsily to the side as he sits, holds the receiver to his ear, and lets out a gasping sob as he hears the dial tone. Through blinding tears, he punches in the numbers for the last time and covers his quivering mouth, praying that she doesn’t answer. But three and a half rings later, her sleepy voice answers, and it is all he can do not to beg her to talk him out of doing what is about to.

_“Mmmm… yes?”_ She asks tiredly, followed by a large yawn.

“Sofia? _Oh, Sofia, mi amor_.” He cries softly into his hand. How he wishes it weren’t her voice. How he wishes this call had gone to the machine, that she had just gone on sleeping. How he wishes so many things that will never come true.

“Is that you?” The sleep is gone from her voice, replaced by passionate concern. “Oh, darling, what’s wrong?”

It takes him a second to compose his voice past the hitch in his throat, and she croons softly to him while she waits for a reply.

_“Everything.”_ He finally manages. “Everything is wrong, Sofia. _Every. Goddamn. Thing._ ”

Tears leak past the fingers pressed firmly into his eyes, and his back twitches in slight convulsions as he cries.

“Tell me.” She says softly, still blissfully unaware that this is the last conversation she will ever have with her husband. Yet there is a hint of worry starting at the edge of her words, and his voice cracks as he replies.

“I-I just don’t know how, Sofia, _my love, god I love you so much_. You know that I do, and you know that I would do anything to keep you safe. I would die a thousand times over if it meant your safety.”

He covers his mouth again and hot tears drip from his cheeks onto his fingers.

“What are you saying?” Her beautiful voice is quiet but wavering. She knows what his job demands, but she had always hoped she would never receive this type of call.

_“I don’t-”_

“What are you saying!” She cries aloud into the receiver and he can picture just how she looks at that exact moment; her raven hair braided and disheveled from sleep, a long, graceful hand resting protectively on her round belly, the other clutching the phone to her ear as hazel flecked eyes brim with tears that are trying not to spill over.

He reaches his hand up and takes the framed photo from his desk. She is so happy in this picture, all smiles and radiance and glowing beauty. This is how he wants to remember her, so he ingrains the picture in his memory as they talk, he stores it in his mind so he will never forget what his wife looks like.

_“I’m so sorry,”_ he whispers, almost inaudibly. _“My love, mi amor, luz de mi vida. I’m so sorry.”_

_“W-why?”_ She asks, her voice teary. “Why are you sorry? Just tell me that, _at least._ ”

He pushes his hair out of his damp eyes and grimaces at the ceiling, rocking ever so slightly where he sits, the tears pooling in a thin sheen on his battered corneas.

“For so many things, Sofia.” He finally answers. “For making you put up with me for the past eleven years. For asking you to marry a man who can’t even be there for you. For-” he pauses, completely unsure how to say this.

“For wanting to start a family when I knew I would not be there. For having to put the world before you when you are my world. _You and only you, mi amor…_

“But I have to… I have to do this, I have to go. I have to stop them or there will no longer be a world in which I can call you mine.”

There is a long silence after this in which they both cry quietly, murmuring broken words of love between sobs until they are finally composed enough to achingly discuss the logistics of what he must do. The next two hours are the most painstaking and loathsome either of them has ever experienced, and the man’s sleeve is soaked when they are finally finished.

“And you will come back.” It is not a question, it is a demand.

He hates to lie, he has never lied to her, not once in his life, but he has to. He can’t have her heart breaking and her life destroyed by his duties. He just cannot do that to her.

“Yes.” He says. “And I will do everything I can to make that happen.”

“Good.” She hiccups, though the hope in her voice seems almost as forced as his.

And then they are quiet once more, neither wanting to say goodbye, neither wanting to put down the phone and hear the dial tone take the place of their lover’s voice. _I’m the man,_ he thinks, _and these are my duties. I shouldn’t make this harder than it has to be._

And so he starts his goodbye.

“Wait!” She cries, her voice the verbal embodiment of a falling hand grasping at a rope that dangles too short. “We haven’t-we haven’t even named the baby yet!” Her throat is dry and raspy and he has no idea how it can still produce such impassioned tones. Still, it does, and his heart feels as if it wants to tear itself from his chest. He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to name the child he will never see but he has to, he has to do it. For her. All and anything for her.

“Yes.” he says, holding back a new gush of tears. “Y-you’re right, we haven’t. Let’s do that. So I can say their name and bounce them in my lap when I get back.”

“Yes!” She says, and he can hear the smile in her teary voice. “Yes, and I-I want you to do it. I want you to name our baby.”

He cannot stop the tears, but he can try to stop the shaking in his voice.

“How about this,” he says, “if it’s a girl, then we name her after her beautiful mother. If it’s a girl, name her Sofia.”

“Yes,” Sofia replies, “yes, that is a good name… And if it’s a boy?”

_Oh god._ He thinks. _I can’t do this, I can’t go through with this. I can’t leave her, I can’t leave my baby. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…_

But he has to. He has to or else StrexCorp will destroy his very reality, will destroy her, will destroy his child. He has to do this for them.

“If it’s a boy? Well-” his throat closes up so she finishes for him.

“If it’s a boy, then we’ll name him after his father. His brave, brave father who will tell him stories of how he saved the world when he comes home. Of how he beat the monsters to save the princess and the prince.”

“Yes,” he chokes, “and that will be his favorite story, I know it.”

Another long silence elapses.

_“I love you.”_

_“I love you, too.”_

_“Goodbye, Sofia.”_

_“Goodbye…”_ Her voice trails and he waits.

_“Goodbye, Carlos.”_

***

**Present Day**

Carlos is not thinking about anything as he waits. He is not thinking about his wife, he is not thinking about his child who is a child no longer. He is not thinking about the danger he is putting himself in, and he most certainly is not thinking about the false truths pulsing deep within his mind that he can only pray or hope or wish will deceive them.

He is simply waiting, numb to the rest of the world, for her to come. The room in which he resides is cold and half blinded by the one section of fluorescents that doesn’t work. This is the side in which he chooses to sit, he prefers the darkness. It’s a tactic as old as any, and it will give him the upper hand when she enters.

But he is least concerned with this. What has his mind reeling is whether or not she has visited the room. The SSP reassured him everything would work, but doubt is clouding his mind like a poisonous gas.

_“As soon as she comes within range-”_

_“But what if she doesn’t?”_

_“Are you doubting our abilities, Mr. Ramirez?”_

_“Of course not!”_

_“Then trust us. We’ve been working with Bloodstones for centuries. It will be completely undetectable.”_

_“And what makes you so sure she’s going to make contact at all?”_

_“Just trust us, Mr. Ramirez, we need you to do that. If you want any hope at getting back inside StrexCorp, you’re just going to have to_ trust _us.”_

And he did trust them, but he’s not so sure anymore.

_What if she has escorts? What if they’ve sent someone else?_

These worries, however, he can easily dispel. He knows her too well, knows that she would never allow that. This is _her_ mission, and she will not let anyone interfere with _her_ work. And from what he can remember, she had developed a strong place amongst the higher ups before he had to take his… _unexpected_ leave, so he’s certain that she is still working independently.

He looks at his watch and then back at the rusting door.

_Any minute now,_ and he suddenly finds himself shaking with nerves. _Christ_ , he thinks, _calm down, everything will be fine_. And then he laughs aloud because this is anything but fine. Fifty percent of the plan is riding on her making adequate contact. The other fifty percent is resting on the security of the implants, and, without those, they will both be at the mercy of Their influences. And then there's the fact that he knows that she’s reported everything to the Execs so they could converge on him at any time. He is literally in their clutches at this very moment, and the only thing preventing them from killing him on the spot is the fact that they cannot enter the building. As soon as he leaves the sanctity of the Darkness, they’ll have every weapon pointed at his head in a fraction of a second. That is, of course, if this all goes according to plan.

But he doesn’t have any more time to think on plans and possibilities because he suddenly hears the faint click of high heels. It gets louder and louder, and his heart beats faster and faster. Sweaty hands clasp in his lap, and he attempts an indifferent expression as he listens to the footsteps that are only seconds away.

A million thoughts race through his brain but he cannot give any attention to them, he is out of time.

The handle to the door rattles at the same moment the footfalls cease, and the hinges shudder as it opens.

He remains seated, and she is forced to comply to his rules. She steps forward, and he smiles because he can see the wild look in her eyes. Her necklace glows brightly, and he knows that she has needed an extra dose to counteract a trigger. A trigger he had set. She has seen the room and he feels a small surge of triumph. It’s a minuscule victory in the war he is waging, but he will not take any for granted.

Warily and wordlessly, she sets her briefcase on the table between them and takes a seat. He has left her the side of the room that is still lit, making her painfully aware that he can see everything of her while she can see nothing of him. She is still incredibly adept in dealing with such situations, and only her eyes hint at the what she is really feeling.

“It’s good to see you again, Esperanza.” He says after a silence that was just beginning to border on awkward.

“How do you know my name?” She asks coolly. “Who are you?”

He thinks about leaning out of the shadows but decides against it for just a minute more.

“You could say I’m an old friend-”

“I don’t have friends.” She interrupts. “Only enemies.”

“Well, that’s a bit cliche.” He smirks. “Wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t care, and I won’t say anything more until you tell me who you are.” He sees how she is tensed, ready to undo the catch on her briefcase at any second.

_“Ah-ah.”_ He tuts. “It wouldn’t do either of us any good if your little drones got involved.”

Her eyes narrow, and it amazes him how she can hold his gaze even with the dark obscuring it.

_“How do you know about them.”_

The words are like the calm before a raging storm and venomous as a snake’s bite. He is glad she cannot see his expression because he winces as the statement grinds into his bones.

He quickly collects himself. “I know many things, and you know many things.”

She scoffs and folds her arms across her chest, leaning back a bit in her chair. It is a signal both of them know, but few would catch. It is a sign of submission.

“I want to work with you,” he continues, “and I want to return to work at StrexCorp.”

“Return?” She raises an eyebrow.

“Yes,” he says, finally leaning out of the shadows, _“return.”_

The look of pure indifference on her face confuses him, makes his words fall short of the inflection he had planned them to have. And as realization doesn’t dawn on her, it does on him, like a cold wave pummeling him into the depths of a bottomless ocean. He tries to pull in air as the water crushes him and roars in his ears, his eyes clouding as it fills them.

“It’s all well and good that you wish to _rejoin?_ my company.” She says defiantly. “But I will ask you one more time before we talk further... _Who. Are. You?”_

The water fills his lungs and chokes his airways. His vision goes black against even blacker waters and his world is gone. But through the despair that floods every crevice of his being, one thought prevails like a ray of sun from their damned Smiling God.

_She doesn’t remember me._


	3. The Woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She loves her god. She truly does.  
> And They love her in equal measure.  
> They do.  
> They must.  
> Because what is she without Light?

Her hands shake as she takes one last look at the directions and forces herself to focus on the jumbled symbols. They take longer to decipher this time, seeing as how her concentration is so viciously marred, partly by the dull ache in her head that still throbs from its previous attempt at splitting itself in two, and partly by the blasphemous decision she has come to that makes her very soul quake.

But she is a professional, and she must dispel these emotions until it is lucrative for her to examine them fully. She cannot let them intercede and compromise her task at hand, this would not be a productive use of her time.

_I must remain productive!_

And so, as she crumples the paper and shoves it into her pocket, she does the same with her fears and uncertainties, pushes them deep down where they cannot affect her at the present. Her necklace glows brighter in response and she knows the Smiling God wishes to help her, wishes to make her strong and whole again. They almost do, but even They seem unable to affect the part of her that is suddenly forming secrets. She winces as Their blood flows hot and purposefully through her veins, trying with all It’s worth to fully heal her. But It cannot. Not this time. For some strange reason, It cannot.

_I’m sorry._  She thinks.

_I will do better._

This is a lie, but she ignores her own deceitfulness and continues on.

The corridor is becoming colder and darker than any she has yet encountered, and the despairing dark makes the yellow glow around her neck take on a virescent hue.

She is looking for a room-

_The room…_

_No!_  She dashes the thought away.

_I am looking for a room not the room and it is **Conference Room-S**  not  **213-B**._

Her heels click violently as mental and physical tension roils inside her, begging to be released, and her knuckles whiten as her grip on her briefcase threatens to snap the handle in two. Darker and darker the hallway becomes until she can only see the inches that are revealed by the light from her choker. But her pace does not slacken, if anything, it quickens and her furious steps are rewarded when she sees a white glow struggling up ahead. Faster and faster until she is suddenly there. The plaque beside the door is aged, but she can still see  _ **Conference Room-S**_  in blocked letters that once might have been a handsome gold but now are tarnished and unworthy.

Unsurprisingly, the handle does not protest but she gives it a bit of a rattle to indicate her entrance. The door squeaks open, but she squints only slightly as her eyes adjust to the onslaught of white. And then she realizes what has been planned, and she mentally applauds her mysterious caller.

_Very clever,_ she thinks as she steps in onto rotting carpet and sets her briefcase on the cold table.

She can just make out a shadowy form in front of her, but the fluorescents on her side refuse to cast even the slightest bit of light to reveal anything further than muted, indistinguishable features. There is a single chair in front of her and she takes it, crossing her ankles and folding her hands a respective five inches inward on the table. They are comfortably situated away from her briefcase so as not to raise any suspicion of her tendencies, but also so that a deft move will have it open in mere seconds should she require any…  _assistance_.

Although her posture may relay confident composure, her heart could prove otherwise, and she fears that the figure in front of her can hear it thudding against her ribcage. Whether they can or cannot, there is no way for her to tell, and so she waits. They may be the one calling the shots, but she can at least keep some dignity in knowing she will not let fierce curiosity take hold and have her address them first, thus signifying a weak desire to know what the hell is going on. Instead, she fixes an intense gaze at approximately average height, hoping she has caught their sight line, and holds it. Seconds pass and they finally give in.

“It’s good to see you again, Esperanza.”

It’s a male’s voice, that much is clear, and she would even go so far as to say pleasant. But it’s not her propensity to remain fixated on such details other than to store them for tactical purposes. What is her responsibility is to focus on “off” details, and the fact that he knows her name while she knows nothing of him is definitely one of those.

She tries not to let her unsettlement show as she replies in an icily indifferent tone, “How do you know my name? Who are you?”

She can tell he’s smiling when he answers, and it becomes a game of cat and mouse as they talk. Though no clear feline or rodent is assigned until she makes a fatally obvious motion towards her briefcase.

_“Ah-ah!”_ He scolds her. “It wouldn’t do either of us any good if your little drones got involved.”

Her stomach drops.

It was one thing for him to know her name. With the right people and the right kinds of persuasion, one can find out the most guarded moniker in all of the Smiling God’s endless universe. But names are different than StrexCorp’s most secretive and masterfully engineered BioBees. Only she, a select few Executives, and their creator know of them, so it’s disturbing to say the least that this stranger is aware of them.

It’s a game of cat and mouse, and that statement has just dubbed him the tiger and her the pygmy, but she is not about to back down.

_“How do you know about them.”_ She does not phrase it as a question.

“I know many things,” he replies, though his confidence is not nearly as potent as it previously was, “and you know many things.”

She lets out a little scoff and leans into the cold metal backing of the chair, reassured that he is back in his place but also aware that she is, too. It’s a stalemate.

“I want to work with you.” He continues, and she focuses her eyes where she is now certain his are. “And I want to return to work at StrexCorp.”

Had this meeting seemed odd before, it was now completely unnerving. She has been through every employee file in StrexCorp’s records: assimilated, re-assimilated, living, and deceased. She has never known an employee who has needed to return to StrexCorp because employees don’t  _leave_  in the first place. Once assimilated by StrexCorp, you remain with StrexCorp. _For life._

She expresses this confusion, and his reply and subsequent revealing of himself seems that it should spark some grand revelation, but it doesn’t. She notes that his voice and expression falters as though he were expecting her to recognize him, and she keeps her face blank and her thoughts quelled. Even the room is momentarily forgotten as she focuses all attention on this enigmatic man.

If his voice had been pleasant before, it now seems almost intoxicating when paired with his absolutely stunning features. She rarely labels anything as perfect, seeing as how StrexCorp has conditioned her to believe all non-Strex employees are utterly  _im_ perfect, but this man’s hair and teeth are… _well_ … even in the dusting of grey at his temples, she cannot find one mistake.

His smile from his grand appearance is quickly fading, and she finds this to be a shame. Though she’s always found StrexCorp’s edict for 24/7 smiles to be unnecessarily macabre, she wouldn’t half mind seeing his for hours on end. But as his face settles into a default expression, she can see that there is something poorly hidden there, some sort of sadness or worry or... _no_. 

A disappointment, like he had been expecting something of her. She cannot fathom what this might be and so decides to press him for further information. He summoned her to one of StrexCorp’s oldest buildings, impenetrable to the company’s influences; it’s just him and her so she might as well make good use of their time.

“So,” she says, leaning forward and steepling her fingers at her lips, “I guess I have to admit something to you, whoever you are, seeing as you still refuse to tell me.”

Whatever traces of despair were on his face are gone as he re-engages her, and the two way interrogation begins.

“Yes?” He replies, “What would that be?”

“I’m confused.” Her mouth pulls down at one corner.

“And why is that?” His tone seems to hold hope, but she focuses more on the way his voice wavers as though trying to compose itself and improvise from previously planned lines. She narrows her eyes but doesn’t blink as she replies.

“I’m confused that you would have one of StrexCorp’s most valued employees spend nearly two months locating you, reporting all findings to our _defense_ _department_ ,  _for Smiling God knows what reason,_ deciphering inane codes, that were easy, d _on’t get me wrong_ , but tedious nonetheless.

“To do all of this only to finally meet you in an abandoned office building, secluded from any possible interference by my company, only to discuss re-employment all the while refusing to disclose your identity.

“That,” she breathes satisfactorily, “is why I am confused.”

He blinks at the inundation of words but doesn’t falter when he replies.

“I guess when you put it that way, it really doesn’t make much sense." A coy smile crosses his countenance. "Speaking on behalf of most factors, nothing really makes sense anyway.” His words are a perfect simile for a shrug as though everything she had just listed was trivial, backseat observation.

“What?” Her eyes narrow again.

“Nothing.” He replies, and then he sticks out his hand making her jump and almost start again for her briefcase. He laughs, and it isn’t cruel, but she makes herself think it is so that she doesn’t start to lessen her guard at his seemingly friendly demeanor.

“Carlos Ramirez.” He says, and she looks him dead in the eye as she takes his hand for two counts before abruptly releasing it.

“I know every employee StrexCorp has ever had, past and present.” She says coldly. “I have never heard or read anything of _you_.”

And then she sees that look again, if only for a fraction of a second but there nonetheless, that expression of despairing, sad defeat.

“Oh, but haven't you?” He asks, and the look is immediately gone.

Something tugs at her memory, making her once again aware of the room but aware of something else, too, something that slips away just as quickly as it comes.

She shakes her head.

“Never.” And then she returns to her own questioning.

“What provoked your leave from StrexCorp? No one ever leaves. And why do you think StrexCorp would want you back? You are a traitor, a _nonbeliever_. What makes you so special that you think you can return?”

Labeling an employee a “nonbeliever” should, at the very least, make them shiver at such a disgusting insult, but he doesn’t even seem phased by the word.

“I have my reasons for wanting to return.” He says. “And I’m sure I will be able to, regardless of what you may think of me or what my records may have been tarnished with.”

She is too confused by this statement to intercept what happens next.

He reaches swiftly across the table and grabs her briefcase. The movement is so quick, it seems he hasn’t even stood from his chair. But she is quick, too, and leaps up, ready to tackle him to the ground.

What he says next, however, makes her freeze mid stand.

“StrexCorp was always very fond of my work, and I can see you are no different.”

Her mouth hangs agape as he opens the case, and the BioBees swarm obediently between the two of them.

They should be attacking. No one but her can control them. _At least, no one except…_

_“But that’s impossible.”_

He diverts his attention from the wasp he had been examining on his fingertip and looks back at her.

_“No one but I and-”_

“The original designer can manipulate them.” He finishes. “As if I didn’t know that.” He adds with another perfect smile.

She grips the table for support. None of this makes any sense.

“Well,” he continues, “desig _ners_  I should say. How is Sanjha by the way?”

She blinks dumbly as she tries to grasp what is happening, tries to comprehend all of the events that have transpired in such a short amount of time.

“Esperanza?”

She breaks from her thoughts and sees that the BioBees have returned to the case, their warm glow replaced by the half-fluorescents

“I asked how Sanjha is. They were a good friend of mine and an even better engineer. I’m hoping to work with them again.”

The words leave her mouth before she can fully process them, and she fears she has said too much.

“Sanjha Rahmed was re-assimilated months ago.”

Her eyes widen, and she brings her hands to her mouth as she realizes what she has just done, as she realizes what she has just told a complete and perfect stranger, a traitor of StrexCorp for all she knows, a-a  _nonbeliever_.

_Smiling God above this is not good._

But his once again defeated expression quickly makes her think otherwise.

_“Oh.”_ He says, and he suddenly looks much older to her. He looks as if he has seen years of suffering and destruction while standing by, too useless to help, and he struggles to regain a default character once more. Her confidence is immediately replenished at seeing this, and she thinks that it may not have been so dire to release this information after all.

“Do you know why?”

She almost laughs at the pathetic question and takes to her seat, this time with her briefcase nestled safely in her lap.

She gives a stony glare and replies, “All re-assimilations are for the betterment of morale, productivity, and the whole of StrexCorp.” It’s as if she is reading verbatim from one of the brochures routinely mailed to unruly employees.

“Yes,” he nods slowly, chuckling sadly, “yes, I know. Ah, they’ve got you pretty well trained, haven’t they?”

She ignores the question.

“And you claim to have worked with Rahmed?”

“It’s not like you need anymore proof.” He shrugs.

“Yes, well,” she crosses her arms, “it’s not like we  _have_  anymore proof, anyway. As far as my company is concerned, you don’t even exist.”

“That’s the weird thing about existence.” He says, leaning forward and gathering his hands in the middle of the table. “People always need proof, they just simply can’t believe. They need papers, words, pictures, samples. It’s the adult equivalent to misunderstanding object permanence. But,” he smiles, “I don’t have to tell _you_ that, do I?

“No, you know plenty about  _that_  already.” His eyes flick to the necklace latched firmly around her neck as he leans self satisfiedly back in his chair.

“Take your Smiling God, for example.” He suggests. “You’ve never seen them, you’ve never touched them or heard them. So how do you know they exist?”

She clenches her hands in her lap, nails biting into her skin, a vicious smile playing cruelly across her tight mouth.

_“How. Dare. You-”_

“And who’s to say they are or aren’t?” He cuts in, forcefully oblivious to her straining anger. “Certainly not me, and not you, either. Things merely exist on their own terms, separate of whether or not they are believed in in the first place.”

“But if no one  _knows_  of them,” she spits, “then there is no point to their existence! Do you know how horrible it would be to exist without ever being known? Do you know how lonely and vast and pointless it would be to exist and have no one recognize you or remember you? To have absolutely no purpose in life?”

She stands abruptly, and her briefcase falls to the floor. There are tears in her eyes that she neither feels nor sees. But he can see them. He can also see the conflagration burning within her, the way her god flows through her body, turning her blue veins venomous gold, her stormy eyes to explosive sunsets of saffron, vermillion, and fiery, fiery rage.

“I know my god is real because They have given me the means by which to exist! They have given me Love that I have never experienced before! They have given me the ability to assist a great company for an even greater cause! They have given me life and purpose, so don’t you  _dare_ presume to say that They do not exist!”

Her body is riddled with static emotion and every hair stands on end, her black locks seeming as the Void itself the way they spill from her tensed shoulders to frame a face comprised of angles so sharp, they could cut air.

_“You say you wish to rejoin my company?”_  Her ensuing laughter crackles like the fires of Hell, searing and evil, from the very pits where torture and agony first originated.

“Mr. Ramirez.” She stalks from around her side of the table, heavy tears still dripping from her smoldering eyes, a wicked sneer of cunning anguish framing serrated teeth. “My company and my god would never taint Themselves by accepting the services of a  _worm_  like you.”

Her entirety glows as she steps into the Darkness he so foolishly assumed would keep him safe, and she pins him in his chair with determined arms.

_“You are better off dead than serving my god.”_ She growls, her face so close to his that their noses almost touch.

She sees genuine fear in his eyes as they flit back and forth, unsure of how to focus on the devil in front of them.

But she is not a devil, she is a disciple of the Smiling God, she is doing Their work, and Their work means either converting or killing.

She chooses the latter, and in a fraction of a second, has a thin blade pressed firmly to his neck. The light from her body glints and shrieks off of the metal, and a line of clear red trickles and traces its way down his neck, staining his collar. He doesn’t dare speak, as any movement will cause the knife that is sharp to the very molecules that make up its edges to slip further into him. All he can do is let out a hitched gasp intermingled with a faint whimper.

Her smile could put the CEO of StrexCorp to shame.

_“You thought it would be wise to insult not only me, but my god and my company, as well?”_ Her straining lips are so close to his ear that the statement is hardly a whisper. She adds a sinister chuckle.

_**“Y o u r   h u b r i s   i s   y o u r   u n d o i n g.”** _

She presses against the blade, and he sucks in a sharp breath. Around them, the room is no longer dark. It is fully illuminated by the piercing yellow that radiates from her. She is not her own person. She is not human.

_I am Light, and Light, and Light…_

_“Wait!”_  He croaks.

The Light dims as her consciousness is momentarily suspended in the material plane. She still blazes with golden purpose, but part of her wants to hear his last words before she redecorates the concrete walls that are so, so dry.

_**“S P E A K!”**_  She demands. _**“W E   W A N T   T O   H E A R   Y O U   B E G   F O R   Y O U R   M E A N I N G L E S S  L I F E   A S   W E   D R A I N   Y O U R   I M P E R F E C T        L I F E   F R O M   Y O U R   W O R T H L E S S   B O D Y!”**_

His blood is dripping steadily now, but she has purposefully misjudged the placement of the blade. She wouldn’t want him bleeding out too quickly.

_“Y-you need me!”_  He gasps, blinking back tears.  _“StrexCorp needs me!”_

She throws her head back and howls with inhuman laughter. The air around shimmers with the vibrations, and the walls are boasting new cracks by the time she is finished.

_**“M I S E R A B L E   W R E T C H!”**_  She roars. **_“W H A T   A R R O G A N C E   G I V E S   Y O U   T H E   B E L I E F  T H A T   Y O U   C O U L D   E V E R   B E   O F   U S E   T O    U S?”_**

He lets out a cry as she pushes the knife harder still. Her face feels as if it is splitting in two, her eyes melting from their sockets, her hair and clothes to flames of an unforgiving and relentless god.

_**“O P E N   Y O U R   E Y E S!”**  _She demands _. **“W E   W A N T   T O   S E E   T H E    L I G H T   L E A V E   S U C H   A N   U N D S E R V I N G   H O S T!”**_

But he doesn’t need to, everything is turning transparent, and she can see through his eyelids as though they are made of glass.

_As though they are made of glass of an unreasonably transparent observing window…_

Her entire body stiffens, and the knife clatters to the floor. She feels a faint prick in her arm before everything suddenly goes white and there is pain…  _there is so much pain._

She screams with the rage of a thousand suns, her head splitting and searing with two fold the power she protests it with. Her mind is on fire, cracking and spewing lava and poison. It breaks into a thousands shards of flamed glass, into razored planets that implode and collapse, making the very framework of her psyche crumble.

_**“W H A T   H A V E   Y O U   D O N E   T O   U S!”**_ She howls, falling to her knees, her vocal chords tearing, and her eyes flooding with radiant anguish.

In what little periphery she is somehow able to focus on, she sees him stagger from his chair, clutching his neck. But she cannot focus on him when there is so much pain.

She collapses onto her back, writhing, her mouth foaming and her body convulsing. Through blurred eyes that threaten to roll into her head, she sees the fluorescent bulbs shattering one by one above her.

She screams harder.

_**“W H A T   H A V E   Y O U   D O N E!”** _

And then she feels a new sensation, a tightening around her neck, and it is cutting off her voice, her screams,  _her air_.

She tries to protest, but her words come out only as strangled gurgles. Her nails claw uselessly at her choker, her legs kick and thrash, and if she could focus past the all consuming agony in her head, her thoughts would be on the fact that she is going to die. Yet still, with desperate hands, she rips at her flesh, trying to find any give between her windpipe and the ever tightening gold. There is none, and her convulsions worsen, but her consciousness is fading quickly, her vision clouding, not by the sun of her god, but by black, despairing oblivion. Her lungs and brain sear in equal measure, her limbs flail with an energy that is not conducive to the amounts of oxygen she is not receiving. But there is nothing she can about any of this.

_I am going to die._

And her body will rot and decay in this decrepit building where her god’s Love and Light once filled every crevice and employee.

_I am going to die, and there is nothing I can do to prevent it._

But the universe has a strange way of contradicting what is being so adamantly confirmed, and it is in this manner that she is able to hold on to life just a bit longer than most in the same situation would be able to. And because of this minute miracle, she is able to feel the fingers on her throbbing neck and hear the words that are so sharp with impossible clarity, that they are somehow comprehended through the haze of pain in her head.

_“I want to return to StrexCorp because I am needed.”_ They say. _“Not by the company,”_ they explain,  _“but by you.”_

And then something completely impossible happens: his fingers find the catch on her necklace that only she and she alone knows the workings and location of, and they are at just the right angle so the blood of her god that flows so lovingly through her stops completely.

The pressure on her windpipe releases almost instantly, and she gasps and coughs, her chest heaving and pulling in great gulps of oxygen to her screaming alveoli. At the same time, the swollen heartbeat in her head subsides to nothing more than a sharp twanging, and her vision returns through a haze of swimming obscurity.

She is still too weak to do anything but lie there on the harsh ground, and so that is was she does for the next few moments; catches her breath and wills her electric nerves to calm enough for her limbs to stop twitching. There is nothing she can do of the residual pang in her head, and so she does not even try. Nor does she attempt to stem the flow of tears that spill all over again from eyes that no longer glow and have returned to the hue of a stormy sea in a raging tempest.

There are so many reasons for her anguish, but she cannot tell which ones affects her more. It could be the immeasurable amounts of mental and physical torment she has just endured in the last hour, or maybe it’s the fact she was bested by a nonbeliever.

But it is neither of these, and she knows this. Yet she still cannot bring herself to believe that which she desperately wishes were not true.

Whether she chooses to acknowledge it or not does not affect its reality, and so, in the end, she succumbs to the devastation of knowing that her god, her benevolent, all consuming Light that has, up until now, loved her and accepted her as a true disciple…

She knows that her Smiling God had tried to end her life, and this hurts more than any superficial malady ever could.

For this reason, she weeps. She weeps because the only entity she ever thought loved her wanted her dead. She weeps because she realizes maybe she really is so alone in her cursed existence. And she weeps because she does not know what to do, does not know if she should continue serving her god and her company, her purpose and contract, she just does not know. So much has transpired in the past hour that she can find no way to assemble the jigsaw puzzle in her mind. All she can do is lie on the rotting carpet underneath the few lights that still hum above her, both thinking and not thinking at the same time.

*

Eventually, enough time passes that her sobs turn to hiccups, and she can gather enough strength to push herself up into a sitting position. She rubs viciously at her eyes to clear away the encrusted tears, allowing for her to survey the room. Or, what is left of it, anyway.

The walls are shattered, crumbling, and the framework of the building is visible through several, gaping holes. Nearly three quarters of the room is dark, and what little light remains barely allows for her to make out very much else.

And then her eyes fall upon the figure of Carlos Ramirez, lying prostrate and unconscious, her briefcase open beside him with a cloud of very confused and very agitated BioBees hovering nearby, awaiting further instruction.

_“Oh for the love of the-”_ but she stops, seemingly unable to bring herself to say the name. It suddenly feels wrong to her, she doesn’t want It to, but It does anyway, like paradoxical sacrilege. She shivers and forces herself not to think on the matter just yet. She seems to be not thinking on a lot of things lately.

She still cannot stand without the threat of collapsing under shaking legs, so she crawls on all fours toward the man and the Bees. As soon as they sense her presence, the drones swarm to her, and she can immediately tell something has gone awry with their programming. The pieces fit easily as she quickly realizes it’s because they have just incapacitated one of their creators, a code she didn’t even know existed in their mainframe.

She knows it’s a futile question, but she asks them anyway.

“Relay most recent command.”

There is a pause before the room promptly erupts in staticky turmoil as the Bees struggle to process her request. Several fall to the ground, a soft _"tink"_  elicited by the ones that land on the calvous patches of the floor, their minute legs twitching and once blurred wings now the likeness of the backs of wind up toys. Whatever bug (she almost laughs at the word play) he’s put in their system is preventing any and all recall of former commands. She only hopes they won’t have to be completely rebooted.

“Stop.” She finally orders them, scooping their fallen comrades back into her briefcase. The rest follow in suit, and then she is once again alone.

Alone with her thoughts.

Her eyes flick to the man next to her.

Alone with her thoughts and him.

_Just us._

She thinks of her god.

_Truly alone._

She can only hope that is not true.

Her head twinges again and she knows she has to stop putting this off. So as she hugs her knees to her chest, sitting under [fading fluorescence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrq1sZ2fsG4) with her back to the disassembling wall, she finally tries to make sense of all the nonsense.

First, there is the room. The room where something happened. The room with the titanium restraints that first broke her mind and made the secrets start: the desire to know yet not to reveal.

Her god was able to heal this… in part, at least.

And then there is Carlos Ramirez. He is not in any of StrexCorp’s records, and yet somehow has worked for the company before. He was an original designer of BioBees, and worked alongside the Senior Principle Engineer who cannot confirm this because they were re-assimilated.

_He knows me. He knows things about me. He should not know these things. Who the hell is he?_

Finally, there is her god. There is what has just happened. There is the ambiguity of it all, the underlying meanings that she has no way to unearth. There is the uncertainty and the indecision of whether or not this revokes her loyalty and her purpose. There is her life before her eyes, and the sanctity and love and purity now wrenched from her to leave a gaping, sunless hole…

_**I t   i s   o n l y   t h r o u g h   U s   t h a t   y o u   m a y   s e e   t h e   L i g h t .   T o      b e   w i t h o u t   L i g h t   i s   t o   b e   w i t h o u t   l i f e . . .   a n d  w h a t** **a r e   y o u   w i t h o u t   L i g h t?** _

_“Nothing.”_ She announces to a Lightless room. “I am _nothing_ without Light.”

Before she had seen It, she was nothing. She was unseen and unknown. She was blinded by Darkness and ignorance and imperfection. And then she was scorched by the unending radiance of a Smiling God. It seared deep within her as interminable rays of Love and purpose and duty and submission.

Submission to StrexCorp and to Them.

Then and only then was she finally able to have a purpose and a place in the world of her god.

But now she no longer feels the Light. Or, it’s not that she cannot feel It so much as It just does not feel the same. It does not feel quite as penetrating, quite as all consuming. It feels foreign, almost, an alien, a parasite within her. She does not want It to feel this way. She does not want to think that the Smiling God is rejecting her, although recent events have presented enough evidence to confirm that this is exactly what is happening.

She brings a tentative hand to her neck, tracing shaking fingers along the delicate gold to that hidden place that only she and she alone knows of.

_It’s not just me, though._

In one sense, it is not just her.

In another, it is. She doesn’t want it to be, but it is not her privilege to decide these things.

Her quivering fingers find the catch, move away, and then return until, with eyes shut to sterile Darkness and artificial light, she introduces her god’s blood back into her own with a desperate hope that They still love her.

There is a still second in which nothing happens at all. The world does not move, the Void does not expand, bodies do not breath. Everything comes to an abrupt halt. For a brief second, there is nothing. And then there is something.

She gasps out a shaking sob of relief as her body warms and slowly returns to life, returns to a world which decides to rocket through a perceived eternity once more. With hasty and trembling hands she tears off her trenchcoat to see her veins glowing gold under stark skin, each heartbeat bringing her ever closer to her god. She has never felt more loved and alive than at this moment.

_They do love me They do love me They do love me They do love me They do love me_

She rocks slowly back and forth, her head buried in her knees, tears of joyous gratitude staining her slacks, her god pulsing through her once more.

_Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You_

_**W h a t   a r e   y o u   w i t h   L i g h t?** _

_“Everything.”_ She replies to a room now radiant with It. _“I am everything with Light.”_

And she is. She is whole again. She is a disciple once more, and she will continue serving her god and her company. She will continue serving the Light.

And as she stands on determined legs with a determined pulse racing in her ears, she purposely ignores the scars on her forearm and the nagging thoughts at the back of her mind. She ignores the secrets because they are a Darkness that is not of the Light. She must ignore them because they are a Darkness that not even the Light can penetrate and one she is as much a part of as it is of her.

_I will never forget them._

But she doesn’t think of this Darkness anymore because she has her god with her once more, she has the Light, and she has a job to do.

She looks at the man lying at her feet.

Yes, she has quite a job to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *smashes through computer screen*
> 
> IIIII'M BAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Okay, that's actually not true. I'm back for a short interval and then I must return to whatever fiction I currently reside in.)
> 
> Okay! *claps hands* Whatever! I'm back and I have a chapter for y'all and I feel productive that I'm finally getting one out after nearly three, freaking months and also so much has happened but that will come later.
> 
> So! I told you I wouldn't abandon this, it's just certain circumstances have made it difficult for me to get on Ao3. However, I've been working my tail off writing this thing and making an outline and getting all the logistics figured out, so once adequate internet use is restores, updates will be much more frequent!
> 
> Of course, college is going to be a thing, so we'll see how well that works with updating, but that's months from now. We'll invest millions of dollars into building a drawbridge that will ultimately be a huge failure and waste of municipal funds when we come to it.
> 
> Okay, that's *checks pockets* yeeeaaah, yup! That's all I think. Oh! Wait! Hang on... (what the heck is this?)
> 
> Um... well, here. I guess it's for you, (whatever it is). Enjoy!


	4. The Secret Operative

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's always Darkest before the Dawn.
> 
> Always Darker before the Light.
> 
> And then the Light illuminates all.
> 
> Yet the Darkness may still prevail.

It is black.

_No._

It is Dark.

He gropes inhuman and disassembled fingers into the Lightless expanse, feeling Nothing and Everything all at once.

_Good,_ he thinks, in thoughtless perception because a thought within a thought is _clearly_ impossible.

_Good,_ he thinks anyway. _They won’t find me._

Who is _They?_ He hasn’t the slightest clue, only the vague comprehension that _They_ are bad, and he must remain hidden from _Them_. But even in the inky Void that slips and flows around and through him, he feels too exposed, like a struggling specimen under a microscope that is just on the cusp of focusing. There are mere seconds remaining before lenses align and lights correct to illuminate his squirming simplicity that is so complex to the observer. The time ticks, and impatient fingers turn knobs that have too little resistance.

There is a sudden flash on the horizon of his Nothing world. He had not been expecting this. This was not something they had prepared him for, and so he does the only thing he thinks might give him a hope of evasion. He does the only thing any human caught in a Nothing world with no hope of escape would deem helpful. He runs.

Nonexistent legs pump an incorporeal self through an immaterial Darkness, and yet he cannot get away. The faster he runs, the slower the metaphor fingers work and with more precision, feeling the workings of the microscope.

_Flash!_

  
He closes insubstantial eyelids and runs faster.

_Flash!_

_No!_

The bursts grow in both number and intensity, turning the horizon from a liquid Darkness to a hazing, gold veil, but no matter how fast he runs, he makes no headway, and the Light grows and grows. He stumbles on nothing, falls, gets back up, keeps running.

_Flash!_

The world in front of him is Dark, behind is Light, and he must stay away from the Light. He must stay away at all costs. But it’s as if he is on a perpetual loop, and he keeps finding himself at the same spot, with the same Darkness ahead and the same Light behind.

Except the Light is growing.

_I’m trapped._

And so he stops running, indistinct legs coming to a perceived stand still, because he knows it is futile. His eyes are shut, but nonsense worlds do not obey the laws of reality so he can see right through them, can see the Light on the edge of his Nothing.

_No!_ He thinks. _This is not supposed to happen!_

The Light is growing, and the Darkness, evanescing.

_No!_

He sees each particle of the damned rays colliding with and destroying those of the Darkness. It melts around him, dripping in thick globules and pooling on whatever ground currently exists in the formerly Nothing world. It gathers speed, growing and swelling, singing Its praise as It arches through the sky. It rolls and laughs blithely, scorching every particle of his Nothing, flames erupting in the few patches that remain like a stray, unassuming spark that flares into a roaring conflagration. It bellows and calls to a world now receding to Light and Hell and Death, but he will not sing with It. He will not sing Its praise.

_Run!_  He tells himself, even though he knows all too thoroughly that this will do nothing.

Still he urges and commands his legs against all possible hope of the mentally understood action actually manifesting into a reality. He struggles and cries, but is rooted to the ground, his feet having yielded to the malicious give of the now sandy terrain. Horripilations shiver across his body, and a frisson of nausea overtakes him as the Light finally reaches where he stands so pathetically vulnerable, with only the weak assumptions of his presumed safety dissolving alongside the struggling remains of the Darkness.

They rays whisper and hum with gentle malevolence as They glide through him, and it is almost a pleasant sensation until They realize he is full of the Darkness. But instead of a pain laced foray erupting within the very atoms of his being, They recoil, flaring and crackling loudly, seemingly unsure as to how to remove the Darkness. He opens his transparent eyelids as if this will assist him in better observing Them. It doesn’t, and They are as incomprehensible as the fact that They cannot remove the Darkness.

_Flash!_

Tentacles of photons and ultraviolet radiation snap like whips, cutting at his body, lashing viciously at his face and forearms as he stands defensively. His entire body tenses, his eyes wince shut, and yet he feels nothing. He can hear Them spitting like sentient flames, can see through muddled periphery Their thrashing, but the contact They make is nothing more than a breath of warm air.

_Is this it?_

He brings down his arms only to throw them back over his eyes again as the Light sears into them. Thankfully they are more solid than his eyelids and offer some protection from the onslaught of lustrous intensity. He still cannot move, and so just stands where he is, enduring the beating the Light thinks It is delivering.

_But what do I do now?_

It keeps up Its attack, but he can sense It is losing, not so much in the fact that he cannot feel Its incursions, but that he can understand Its failure as easily as if he were receiving defeated gestures from a conscious being. The comprehension grows and now, instead of just the Light, there are emotions battering him, and these he senses more clearly than the continual ghosting of the Light on his intangible flesh.

There is hatred, putrid and venomous, embodied with viscous disdain, and immixed, ironically, with the desire to love. It is not a passionate love, but an overwhelming infatuation that would asphyxiate as soon as adore him.

Separate from this love-hate complex, though attempting to mask itself with honest affection, is a more disturbing sensation, on a level more vile than pure loathing or psychotic desire could ever hope to attain, pulsing with a corporeal mentality that makes less sense than the senseless world he currently resides in. This “It” that he feels more than anything, that quashes all other sensations as the Light snaps at his body, is the hideous obsession to completely and utterly _consume_.

It does not just want him, it _needs_ him. It _needs_ to take apart his body atom by atom and assimilate them into Its own. It _needs_ him for Its own, _needs_ him to be a part of It as if It will not survive without him. And It cannot survive without him, cannot survive knowing there is a _non-believer_ defying It and all It stands for. It cannot survive this way, not fully, not… completely.

It cannot survive with him, either.

Its entire reign rests solely on a fragile equilibrium that must be dutifully maintained or Its entire framework will collapse. It may be strong, but only as strong as Its believers and as weak as Its _non-believers_. He knows this, because he has dealt with It before. He also knows that It is not an “It”.

It is a Them.

It is the Smiling God with all of Their horrific splendor poised in thoroughly murderous intention.

It is the Smiling God, and he has beaten Them before, but the Smiling God remembers him and is stronger this time.

It is the Smiling God, and he will not smile.

**_Y O U   W I L L ._ **

The voice is thick with a honey sweet malice that caresses his brain the same way sandpaper caresses a subjectively imperfect sculpture.

_I will not!_

This reply is a mistake, and the mere bit of acknowledgment gives Them enough leeway to slip just barely within his brain where They begin to seep Their Light between synapses and along action potentials.

He screams in anguish, and his legs buckle, knees burying into the sand where sharp granules burrow into his suddenly tangible skin. Clarion laughter sounds around and inside of him as he wails, Their fire much stronger than had ever been anticipated.

His eyes are open now, and the Light pours into them, scorching his corneas and filling his pupils to slither and drip down nerve endings where delicate rods and cones adamantly attempt to deny the blinding yellow.

**_A C C E P T   I T ._ **

**_B E C O M E   I T ._ **

**_Y O U   A R E   L I G H T   A N D   L I G H T   A N D   L I G H T . . ._ **

_I AM NOT!!!_

He caterwauls and tears at his eyes, dust caked fingernails scratching and digging until he feels vitreous fluid seeping warm and thick down his cheeks and hands. But the Light shines on. It does not need him to have sight to see It. It does not need eyes to be acknowledged. It merely needs a mind to manifest in and infect.

_I must destroy my mind, too._

The thought has a clarity sharper than the Light, and he accepts it without hesitation. He knows he isn’t real, knows this isn’t real. They are real, but he and this and everything else is just a projection of his subconscious. He is not real, so this will not kill him.

At least he hopes not.

But he has no time for hope or dumb luck. He must act immediately lest the Light gain a firm anchor within him and he be lost to Their endless sun and Love for the rest of his life. So with straining determination he searches for any object that might assist him in smashing in his head. His hands sift wildly and blindly through the sand, but find nothing. He stands, only to fall again, releasing another volley of screams as the pain races through him.

The Smiling God knows what he trying to do, and They will not let him.

**_W E   L O V E   Y O U ,   C A R L O S .   L E T   U S   L O V E   Y O U .   L E T   U S   M A K E   Y O U   W H O L E .   L E T   U S   L O V E   Y O U   A N D   S H O W   Y O U       T H E   W A Y .   W E   A R E   T H E   W A Y ,   C A R L O S ._ **

**_L E T ._ **

**_U S ._ **

**_L O V E ._ **

**_Y O U ._**  

_NO! I WILL NEVER LOVE YOU!_

His mind pulses with agony as his entire body fills with potent rage.

**_I WILL NOT LET YOU LOVE ME! I WILL NOT SUCCUMB TO YOU!_ **

These assertions do nothing to impede the voracious Light within him. In fact, they strengthen It, and each verbal blow from him brings an equally stronger one from the Light. No matter how adamantly he rebukes Them, there seems to be no escape.

There is no escape, but there is no submission, either. He can still keep Them at bay, though not for long.

The standoff lasts for what seems like years, though he knows it’s only been minutes, and his rebuttals are becoming weaker and weaker. His muscles fail, and he collapses fully onto the sand where his oozing eye sockets filling with grit and dirt. His spent and throbbing body twitches and begs for relief from the blistering Light attempting to devour him molecule by molecule.

**_Y o u   a r e   s u f f e r i n g ,   C a r l o s ._ **

The cloying voice gently embraces him, and he moans, though not unpleasantly.

**_L o o k   a t   y o u .   L o o k   a t   w h a t   y o u   h a v e   d o n e .   Y o u   c o u l d   b e   s o   m u c h   m o r e   t h a n   t h i s .   Y o u   c o u l d   b e   a   p a r t   o f   U s ,   C a r l o s ,   a n d   a l l   t h a t   W e   a r e ._ **

He could. He could so easily become a part of Them and Their Light and Love. He could capitulate, could let Them Love him. He could join Them and Their ceaseless mission of productivity. It would mean the end of this _endless_ pain, of his imperfections, it would mean the end of so many things that he cannot concentrate on other than the termination of this _unbearable_ pain. They sense his growing desire to join Them, and the pain increases ten fold.

**_W e   a r e   E v e r y t h i n g ,   C a r l o s ,   a n d   y o u   a r e   N o t h i n g ._ **

They tell him this over his screams, Their voice as delicate as a lover’s whisper.

**_W h y   w o u l d   y o u   e v e r   w a n t   t o   b e   s o m e t h i n g   a p a r t   f r o m   E v e r y t h i n g ?   W h y   w o u l d  y o u   e v e r   w a n t   t o   b e                     N o t h i n g ?_ **

Through his screams, he answers them, though he does not acknowledge that he does so.

They are pleased. They believe They will win, and They coax at him like a child.

**_Y o u   d o   n o t ,   C a r l o s ,   y o u   w a n t   t o   b e   a   p a r t   o f   U s .   T h a t   i s   w h a t   y o u   w a n t .   T h a t   i s   a l l   y o u   h a v e   e v e r                   w a n t e d ._ **

**_Y o u ._ **

**_W a n t ._ **

**_U s ._ **

And he does! He wants Them! He _needs_ Them, almost as much as They need him. He needs the Light, no matter how much It may hurt, because he knows the Love will heal him in the end.

In the reality outside of this one, he knows the Light will not, in fact, heal him. It will destroy him. He knows the Smiling God does not love him but loathes him with a pure intensity. But he is not outside of this reality. He is within it. That reality and all that he knows in it cannot exist for him anymore, not when this reality is so unequivocally _real_.  

They are also real, but he is not real, not without Them. He must become real, must make this _excruciating_ pain stop. He must join Them, because it is the only way.

They are the only way.

The Smiling God’s cajoling comes to an abrupt halt as Carlos suddenly stands determinedly and opens his arms to embrace Them. His flesh tingles as the Light lilts tentatively across it, unsure yet blinded by Its own desire to consume him.

It is in this way that It does not notice the deceit, but then again, neither does he.

It is hesitant at first, and then It is all at once. A thousand needles under the guise of sun drenched Love.

He does not scream. Not this time. It won’t do any good, and so he stands and receives what the Light has to offer.

The Darkness that remains within him now fizzles and bursts in deafening explosions, the Light eradicating Its imperfect existence, and with each erasure, a fresh prick is made for the Light to shine through.

_Pop! Pop! Pop!_

His cells lyse from the overabundance of ultraviolet perforin, and his very being begins to dissolve and deteriorate.

But he is not dying.

He is simply becoming...

_Light, and Light, and Light, and Light…_

The Smiling God speaks again with a purring arrogance of inflated self confidence.

**_D o   y o u   s e e   n o w ,   C a r l o s ?   D o   y o u   s e e   t h a t   W e   a r e   t h e   w a y ?   D o   y o u   s e e   U s ?   D o   y o u   L o v e   U s ?_ **

_No._

_Yes, I do. I love you._

He crumples to the sand as a massless existence, the ghosts of his nerves erupting in fiery torment.

_D O   Y O U   L O V E   U S ?_

_No!_

_Yes! I do! I Love you!_

They are pleased.

They are relentless.

The pain does not stop.

**_A n d   W e   L o v e   y o u ._**   

A vague perception of laughter at the ludicrous statement.

**_L e t   U s   s h o w   y o u   w h a t   t h a t   L o v e   i s ,   C a r l o s .   L e t   U s   s h o w   y o u   w h a t   L o v e   l o o k s   l i k e .   D o   y o u   w a n t   t o   s e e   O u r L o v e ?   D o   y o u   w a n t   t o   s e e   U s ?_ **

An old phrase comes to his incorporeal mind, to the mind that is almost consumed but is not quite consumed.

_To see is to Believe._

But does he want to Believe? It is one thing for him to accept Them, but to actually Believe would mean an irreparable relinquishing of his entire self to Them. There will be no return from this. It will be absolute.

**_I t   i s   a l r e a d y   a b s o l u t e ,   C a r l o s ._ **

And They are right. They are always right, always were right, and so he Believes. He opens eyes that do not exist to a Being that exists all too thoroughly, and he sees Them for what They really are. He sees the great glowing coils of the universe, and he sees how they are unwinding. He sees infinite hands and hearts reaching for him, and he reaches back for them. He sees infinite smiles and the infinite teeth that construct those smiles' symmetries. He sees the infinite tongue, pulsing, wet and pink and grey, pushing from behind the infinite teeth as a glistening mirror for him to see himself in.

And he does. He sees his Perfect self, the self that everyone wants to become, not as themselves, but as this one image he sees on the infinite tongue. They all want to become this, this one person, this one entity, this one… _Perfection_. This is what everyone wants to become.

**_D O   Y O U   S E E   N O W ,   C A R L O S ?   D O   Y O U   S E E   T H A T   W E   A R E   A L L   O N E ?   T H I S   L O V E ?   T H I S   L I G H T ?   T H I S   P E R F E C T I O N ? D O    Y O U   S E E   T H E   C O N N E C T I O N S ?_ **

He does.

He sees the great glowing coils, they way they weave in and out of the hearts, the hands, the reaching smiles and the relentless tongue. He sees the entirety of Them, of the Being that Loves him, and he sees the Being that _is_ him. He can see It all, can see Everything, and he Believes It all. He sees It all, and he finally Becomes It. He Becomes One, he Becomes All.

He Becomes… _Perfect_.

But the Perfection is not without cost. It is not without pain. It is not without loss and erasure and everything known, forgotten, so it can be made better. Nothing is without anything, but he is no longer Nothing.

Now, he is Everything. Now… he is Perfect.

And he sees things as he is made Perfect. He sees all that the Smiling God makes better. He sees his life. He sees his wife. He sees his child who is no longer a child, and they manifest like a dream, with the aura of impossible recollection that only dreams can have. They haze behind a murky curtain that he tries and fails to pull back. He reaches out for them, to reveal them to his new god so they may be rectified, but he cannot move, cannot think.

The Smiling God moves and thinks for him now, and because They do not see the curtain, They do not attempt to perfect what is behind it. They do not see the remnants of his life, They do not see his wife, and They do not see his child, the one who is no longer a child. They see everything but these things, and so they are not perfected. They are left. Untouched, as the rest of his mind unravels for a new pattern to be used. He is reconstructed, he will be the same, but it will be different. It will be better. _He_ will be better. There will be no mistakes this time. This is what the Smiling God thinks, and so this is what he thinks. Could he think for himself, he would think that there will be mistakes. Those things behind the curtain, they were not made better, they were left. Untouched. They will mar this Perfection, they will make him _im_ perfect.

_They they they they…_

But the Smiling God thinks for him now, and he no longer remembers them, the things behind the curtain. He remembers only Light and Love and the unwinding and rewinding. He remembers only this, and then he remembers nothing. Not a thing. Not as the world fades to black, to Nothing, to a Nothing that is Everything, to an Everything that he cannot recall.

And he sees Everything and Nothing all at once, and then all is forgotten and he remembers nothing more.

***

_“Carlos…”_

There is distance. A vastness unknown to anyone or anything. Immeasurable. Traversing an expanse that does not adhere to the finiteness of any limitation.

There is distance, but more specifically, there is a distance, with all the precision and ambiguity a single, determinant letter can imply. And of the countless and counted distances, of the lengths yet discovered and attempted, there is this one distance, and it is this that he must travel. He must conquer this breadth of ceaseless forever to whatever lays beyond. To the ever that greets him on the other side. He knows not what this ever is, nor what the implications of it are, but he must find it, must reach it. He must go.

Now.

_“Carlos…”_

For decades he runs, for centuries he walks, for millennia he crawls, and the distance swallows him in all the directionless bearings that comprise it. He claws his way forward, or maybe backward, or may no way at all. Maybe he simply is in the same place as before. If there even is a before. If there even is a now. If there even is a later. If there is anything at all.

There isn’t.

Only the distance.

Only the determination of “forward” and the promise of “future”. And even then they are not guaranteed at all. They are merely concepts, whose truths rest on whether or not he thinks them to be so.

_Whether I believe them or not._

_I…_

Something clicks, and not simply as a fanciful play on words. But the figurative click occurs simultaneously with the auditory click, at the same time, and in the same place. In his brain.

_My brain._

_How long have I been here?_

_Millennia_ _._

He thought this, and it became true.

_How long is this distance?_

_Forever._

He thought this, and it became true.

Another click, like heels on sterile tiles.

He thinks this, and it becomes true.

He thinks many things that are already true and happening, and slowly the distance melts away. The forever recedes, and the ever makes itself known.

It appears first as a milky white, a swimming, imperceptible colloid that settles with a heavy expectation into his bones. Then it is the certainty that geometry and structure so arrogantly boast: a corner, an edge, a line that is not endless. And there are more. There is much more.

He thinks this, and it becomes true.

He pictures the symmetry of a single room: alabaster, sterile, a single bed and a single table.

He thinks this, and it becomes true.

He pictures the nurses bustling around him, standing back on strident orders, moving again when commanded.

He thinks this, and it becomes true.

He pictures Executives. Or maybe just one. Yes, just one Executive, in a double breasted suit with a golden tie and a twenty four karat smile.

He thinks this, and it becomes true.

He imagines himself opening his eyes, taking in the reality of the room, of the nurses, of the Executive, of the smiles…

He thinks this, and it was already true.

He raises himself onto elbows that resist, finding themselves incapable, incapacitated…

He pictures the restraints, cold titanium, barbaric in their subtleties, treacherous and ancient.

He thinks this, and it was already true.

And then he needn’t think anymore as the present catches up, settling as the past, becomes the future, the present, and so forth, all within the confines of a reality he no longer controls.

Or maybe he never controlled it at all.

_“Carlos…”_

The voice exists without his command, the lips of the Executive move without his command. He tries to picture the distance again, to regain the control, but it is lost because he is where he is supposed to be. Things that are supposed to be happening are happening.

_Control is only given when control is all you lack._

And there is so much control now.

“Carlos.” The voice sounds again, gratingly warm, like a struggling hand thrust upon a stove. He looks at the eyes that do not deliver the words. They are warm. Like a struggling hand thrust upon a stove. Rich brown and gold speckling.

“It’s good to have you back.”

The struggling smile, the struggling eyes, they belie what they say aloud, confirm what they whisper inside.

The voice leans forward as the woman remains prostrate. A scent of sandalwood and blood.

“How do you feel?”

To him, it is a pointless question. To them, it is a test. His answer could mean Everything, or it could mean Nothing at all. But the Smiling God exists as Everything, not as Nothing, so it is this they will judge his answer by.

An answer that contains Everything.

He opens his mouth, closes it, tastes the teeth that are coveted for their perfection. For a perfection that existed before Their’s.

_Impossible._

“I…”

The room is pregnant with intention, with possibility, but the Executive does not lean forward. She is not phased by the suspense, by the ellipsis she can only hear and not see. These are not things she does. These are things she wants to do.

She does not.

Carlos looks at ceiling: a finite plane of uniformity. He looks at the Executive: a golden emphasis of unified transcendence. He looks back and back without ever moving his head, without ever moving. Even his pulse seems to halt. Not a single cell moves. Nothing happens, though Everything should be happening.

He hopes they cannot monitor this.

“I feel…”

He does not.

_“...productive.”_

A tension releases, like a rubber band no longer held taut between shivering fingers. Relief floods in pounding waves, the band returns to its formless form, the fingers relax from the expectation of pain. Were it possible, the Executive might just smile wider.

A stiff hand, still unmastered in the art of falsity, claps his wrist. Holding tight.

_I’d have to chew off my own arm to escape._

One word. _“Good.”_

She stands and straightens her tie that did not nor ever will need straightening. It’s simply a formality, a superfluous routine.

Other words are given as the golden woman leaves, but Carlos does not hear these. In fact, he does not hear or perceive anything else beyond what is in his mind.

_"Productive."_

He tests the word against his perfect teeth. It tastes like acid, the same as it did so many years prior.

_"Productive."_

Several nurses cluck around him, eyeing cautiously each time he repeats the word but with an overall sense of complacency at his seemingly swift recovery and desire to put forth all he can into the betterment of the company.

_Productive._ He thinks it this time. Saying the word in his head where they cannot hear him. Where he hopes they cannot hear him.

He thinks it again, but unlike all that surrounds him, unlike all that _is_ , it does not become true. It never was true, never will be true, and this _un-truth_ grows within him like a tumor, malevolent and promising of great and terrible things. A lesion on his heart that they think beats only for a Smiling God.

It does not.

It never has.

It never will. And he harbors this darkness within him, letting it flourish and spread its delicious poisons in his purified body.

But his body was never actually purified.

The Smiling God only thought it was.

They had thought this, and, like his erroneous assertion of productivity, it had not become true.

None of it had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yesssss, now we're getting to the actual plot! It only took me four chapters and nearly 20,000 words! Congrats on reading this far! Have a gold star!

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to longhairshortfuse for beta-ing this for me and credit for BioBees goes to them, as well! Please excuse any terminology I may butcher. I'm not very knowledgeable on spy lingo and StrexCorp vernacular.


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